Catalyst Crime - Catalyst Crime (2021)

Thanks to technology, bands like Catalyst Crime can ‘easily’ come together featuring an assortment of musicians around the world. Featuring members of bands like Xandria (drummer Gerit Lamm), Pyramze (keyboardist Jonah Weingarten) alongside Zoë Marie Federoff (ex-Insatia), this outfit delivers a very bombastic and explosive combination of Symphonic/Gothic Metal with cinematic elements, creating a very immersive and highly enjoyable release.

With nearly 50 minutes of explosive music, the band quickly sets a lush and bombastic vibe with the opening intro. The band’s power-ballad game is strong as “Projection Of My Mind” nicely starts with a piano passage and explodes into a superbly catchy piece with killer keyboard solos and guitar solos, distinguishing them from the pack. The album’s first standout piece has to be the memorable “Condemn Me To Chaos”, a track that will sound quite familiar but will take you a bit to realize that it has the same melody as “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak but with some twists and turns.

The album never lets down its intensity with excellent tracks like “Twice Upon A Time”, “Cognitive Dissonance” featuring Jake E., and our personal favorite “Nowhere Near Dead Yet” and its combination of dramatic vocal arrangements, soaring clean female vocals and harsh screams alongside melodramatic orchestrations. Produced by Alexander Krull in Mastersound studios, this release has that dynamic and bombastic sound that he is an expert in delivering.

Catchiness is one of the band’s main staples and pieces like “Not Even Once”, perfectly showcase it. Overall, “Catalyst Crime” is one of those extremely well produced and engaging releases that any fan of the genre will love. If you are a fan of bands like Xandria, Delain, Serenity, Leaves’ Eyes, etc. you need to listen to this killer debut release.

Label: Personal Records

Release: October 22nd, 2021

Genre: Symphonic/Gothic Metal

Country: International